


Pandemic

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-24
Updated: 2008-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:59:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was written for Hogwarts Elite's Hogsmeade Term 14 Fiction Contest #1. The prompt: <em>Your task is to write a fic detailing one character's entry into the afterlife. Your character must be one from canon, but does not have to have died during the series.</em></p><p>Dedicated to my Puffs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pandemic

**Author's Note:**

> Harry Potter characters belong to J.K. Rowling.

A virus borne by air is one thing; one borne by magic, quite another. Potions and charms, spellbooks and scrolls, and just enough contact with Muggles due to countless uses of memory charms and the like to ensure that it had spread to them as well. And of course the more mundane methods of transmission: it initially manifested itself as coughing and sneezing akin to any common cold.

Where it came from was anyone's guess. By the time people started wondering about it, when the first death reports started rolling in, the silent killer had infiltrated all of Europe. That let people guess that it had originated in Europe somewhere, but even as the airports closed down, incoming planes turned back dangerously low on fuel, the virus was on its way to the States, accompanying the Minister for Magic to an important conference so top-secret that it could not be conducted in any way other than in person. Rumours flew about the nature of the conference, mostly speculating on the notion that the Minister might have been fleeing a country he knew would be plague-ridden within the week. But it was too late for him, and for everyone else.

* * *

After the sneezing and coughing, people started to have trouble breathing. Scientists said it must be something in the air. The St Mungo's staff knew it was in the air now; they could see it. Particularly infectious areas glowed with a sullen purple mist. Fortunately, the Muggles couldn't see it; the rioting hadn't started just yet. But people were worried.

* * *

People barricaded themselves indoors to wait for the end to come – and they were not disappointed. This virus was not held back by any conventional quarantines. Patients in the magical hospitals scattered across the globe had the best chance but, one by one, even they fell as their bodies simply refused to keep working.

* * *

One laboratory estimated the mortality rate at 99.6%, even as the researchers were reaching for their tissues and cough syrup, terribly aware that they would not work in the end. One by one the radio and television stations dropped off the air, and the world fell silent.

* * *

'I didn't want to leave you, anyway.' Neville's voice dropped to a whisper. 'Not even after you stopped breathing.'

Alice put her hand on her son's shoulder and turned him to face her, pulling him into her arms, letting him cry. 'They're only our bodies now,' she said softly. 'They're not _us_.'

Neville pulled away long enough to look at his own body, hunched over in the hospital chair, forehead resting on the counterpane of his mother's bed. It was receding, as if he was going away from it up a long tunnel, and he felt detached from it. He realised that he was no longer precisely _him_, nor was Alice precisely _Mum_. They were shining souls, separate from their bodies, moving further on, further up and away from the world, passing not through the roof of the hospital but through a corridor of light that grew brighter and brighter. The eyes that Neville did not precisely have any more could tolerate this light quite well, and as it reached out and surrounded them both, they simultaneously stopped existing and became a part of all existence.


End file.
